New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation. Here is New York, E.B.White, 1949 [Taschen, "365 Day-by-Day New York Calendar"]

Step 61 - Find Your Lifestyle
As I said in one of my recent posts – the world has changed and the way we live has changed. I honestly think it’s time to reevaluate some ideas and solutions about the life we want to l...

Do you even want to get married?
I’ve been thinking a lot about marriage recently (not about my own), because suddenly I spend a lot of time talking to married guys (just as friends). And I started to come...

Choose Your Own Relationship
I’m single so – naturally – I do think about guys and relationships. I’ve been thinking a lot of what type of a guy would actually make me want to be in a relationship. An...

What’s The Best Dating Advice?
There are plenty of advisors on the dating scene – there are videos and articles about every aspect of dating, with all these great pieces of advice: “What to do on a date,&rd...

Step 56 - Getting You Off The Hook.
I’ve done some thinking recently and tried to figure out the basic way people come up with an excuse. It’s a broad topic, but I’ve mostly experienced one response from variety o...

Williamsburg Is Over
Summer’s almost here, so I decided to take a walk in Williamsburg, and it just reassured me that… thinks are really over for this neighborhood. I moved to Greenpoint (a sister neighb...

Where is love?
Love has been on my mind recently (and probably has been unconsciously for a while now) and I started thinking about where to find it. I know it’s a pretty odd thing (...

Why Having a Boyfriend Will Not Make You Happy?

When I was a teenage girl (that is one week ago… just kidding), my biggest dream was to have a boyfriend. Especially since a weekly column called “Love Story” from “Bravo” teen magazine was telling me week after week that I need one. I was going to bed crying about it and I kept thinking (a lot of thinking was involved) how I can get the one (literally the one – I always had one guy I liked and I would have said “no” to any other guy who wanted to ask me out). When I got older, not much changed – I just got grumpier and less self-confident, ridden with anxieties and complexes. All of which – obviously – was turning guys off and was making me more miserable.

I didn’t believe I could attract anyone that I liked (I mean – this “one guy” that I wanted; the guy changed over years, but the pattern didn’t). Everything changed before I moved to NY. I knew that living in NY is a bigger dream than anything else, so it easily overshadowed “the boyfriend dream”. And it has been almost five years now with my new way of looking at it – and two years with an entirely new mindset. What’s my new mindset about? I just believe that it’s not up to anybody to make me happy. That’s why I don’t believe that having a boyfriend can make you happy. It can make you happier – I would agree with that and I look forward to having someone who will bring extra value to my life, too. But you can’t put your happiness on someone else’s shoulders. Why this person would make you happy? They offer you some attention? They give you validation?

What’s that you’re looking for in a partner? Do you think he or she will take away your insecurities? Here is the thing – I don’t think he or she will. And if suddenly having a partner will change your world, I would think that there was something wrong with your world to start with. If suddenly having this guy next to you finally puts a smile on your face, it means that you didn’t take care of yourself the way you should have. Your job is to make yourself happy. Instead of sitting and thinking “Where is he?”, find your own way towards happiness. But you have to find roots of your unhappiness first. Dig deep, meditate, read, think, go to therapy – find a source of your sadness.

I believe in love. I believe in happy relationships and having your life improved just because a new person came to your life, but I don’t believe in the “I need someone to be happy” philosophy. If you’re not happy by yourself, the chances that you’ll be a happy person in a relationship are not that high. Think about it – if you’re happy only being with someone, that means that you’re miserable by yourself. So what happens when this person suddenly disappears? I noticed that most people jump from one relationship to another, not even giving themselves a few months’ break. Why can’t you be by yourself? What’s wrong with spending some time just with you and your friends? People who are happy with themselves attract other happy people. Miserable people attract miserable people. Which one do you prefer to be…?

Schedule some time with yourself every week – write it in your calendar – and ask yourself a few questions. One of them should be: Am I happy? If not, ask yourself again: What steps should I take to change it? It might turn out that it’s not about having a boyfriend at all. Most of the times we are not even aware of what our real problem is – and that’s the problem in itself. So instead of spending time spying on the guys you like on social media, do this quiz with yourself. Yes, boyfriend can make you happy, but don’t rely on him as your main source of happiness. That’s a big weight to carry and a lot of pressure on him. And if you want to be in a relationship, mind the fact that it’s a two way street – you start being a bit responsible for his smile, too. Where are you going to find a source of that if you can’t find it within? In order to get something from him, you also have to give. What if he expects that you’ll make him happy…? Now, wouldn’t that be a surprise, huh?